Drug Trafficking and the Informal Market in Rio de Janeiro

This paper is mainly concerned with the activities of the informal drug market in Brazil and the social and cultural changes that accompany it at the local level, leaving outside the intentions or consequences of the Brazilian government's law enforcement policies and techniques. The main question is how the consecutive effects of poverty and accelerated urbanisation and immigration are linked with institutional mechanisms and the presence of networks of organized crime that has criminalized informal work. It relativizes, then, the effects of poverty and accelerated urbanisation for, although these are clearly connected with the results and causes of exclusion, organized crime crosses all social classes and has bonds with organized legal business and does not exist without institutional support from state agencies. Therefore, the related issues of violence, criminality and insecurity cannot be properly understood if removed from the larger political and economic framework. Assuming that many poor young men have been in a state of vulnerability as a consequence of crisis within families, estrangement between adults and youths, an inefficient school system and lack of professional training added to insufficient employment possibilities, I will present arguments that further the idea of "perverse integration".